Saint Barnabas Hospital Breaks Own Record For Kidney Transplants

LIVINGSTON, NJ — The magic number is 351 at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, which recently broke its all-time record for kidney transplants performed in one year.

On Friday, the hospital announced it completed 351 kidney transplants in 2019, topping its previous record of 341 set in 2017. With this “unprecedented volume,” Saint Barnabas was the largest kidney transplant center in the Northeast and one of the top kidney transplant programs in the country, administrators said.

Notably, the hospital performed 159 “living donor kidney transplants” last year, making it one of the largest living donor programs in the United States.

“The growth of Saint Barnabas’s living kidney donor program has arisen from processes and partnerships put in place almost 15 years ago,” said Francis Weng, the newly appointed chief of the hospital’s transplant division.

“Our transplant program offers an innovative and comprehensive array of living donation options that are available at only a few other leading transplant centers,” Weng said.

• See related article: 29 Strangers Donate Kidneys To Each Other In Essex County

In addition, the hospital’s transplant program continued to excel at performing deceased donor kidney transplants, completing 192 last year, a 52 percent increase from 2018, Saint Barnabas stated.

According to administrators:

“Several programs at SBMC now allow many patients to receive a deceased donor kidney transplant even more quickly than before. For example, in 2019 alone, 30 patients accepted and received kidneys from deceased donors who had hepatitis C. Those patients then received medications for eight weeks to cure their hepatitis C. Patients who were blood type B - a blood type that usually has a longer wait time - were able to receive kidneys from donors with blood type A, with excellent success rates.”

For more information about the Renal and Pancreas Transplant Division at SBMC or living donations, visit www.transplantkidney.org or call 1-888-409-4707.

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